Screening & Talk
Tino Sehgal Related Program
Held in parallel to Tino Sehgal’s This You, a number of dance film screenings and talks at Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art will unpack the origins and legacies of postmodern dance
Curation and Lecture by Nanako Nakajima (Dance Researcher and Dramaturge)
① Forever Postmodern Dance
Includes the first screening in Japan of Trio A with Flags, from the private collection of Yvonne Rainer!The first day of screenings examines American postmodern dance. In addition to major early work by artists associated with New York‛s Judson Dance Theater, which was a leading force in postmodern dance, the screenings include a work by two artists who influenced them: the choreographer Merce Cunningham and composer John Cage. The talk after the screenings discusses recent developments among the companies presented at Kyoto Experiment as well as the circumstances in the 1960s and 1970s, including the Vietnam War and censorship. Focusing on the relationship between dance and film or video, the program introduces why postmodern dance‛s experimental endeavours continue to attract interest.
② Postmodern Dance and Visual Arts
Postmodern dance brought the visual arts and dance closer than ever before. Today, the movement remains a major point of reference for contemporary modes of art. The second day of screenings introduces the work of visual artists who contributed to postmodern dance as well as contact improvisation, which emerged in the same period, the Fluxus movement, and performance art, which employs the body as an artistic medium, while also searching for connections between postmodern dance and contemporary art. In the talk, Nanako Nakajima and Keiko Okamura discuss the influence of postmodern dance on artists in Japan.
10.21 (Fri) Talk Guest
Keiko Okamura
Okamura has been involved in numerous contemporary art exhibitions as a curator both at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (1995-2008, 2021-present) and the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum (2008-2021). She has also served as the founding director/curator of the Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions, a cross-disciplinary festival of art and moving image from its first to 13th edition. Recent exhibitions she curated include “Her Own Way Female Artists and the Moving Image in Art in Poland: From 1970s to the Present” (2019) and “Yamashiro Chikako: Reframing” (2021), both at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum.
① 10.2 (Sun)
11:30–12:30 Screening
12:40–14:10 Talk
② 10.21 (Fri)
18:00–19:00 Screening
19:10–20:40 Talk
Nanako Nakajima (Dance Researcher and Dramaturge)
Dr. Nanako Nakajima is a scholar and dance dramaturg. Her recent research and -dramaturgy projects include “Yvonne Rainer Performative Exhibition” at Kyoto Art Theater Shunju-za in 2017, and the lecture-performance “Noh to Trio A” at Nagoya Noh Theater in 2021. She was a Valeska Gert Visiting Professor 2019/20, at Freie Universität Berlin. She received the Special Commendation of the Elliott Hayes Award in 2017 for Outstanding Achievement in Dramaturgy from the Literary Manager and Dramaturgs of the Americas. Her publications include The Aging Body in Dance: A Cross-Cultural Perspective, and she recently launched a bilingual website on dance dramaturgy http://www.dancedramaturgy.org
Curation and Lecture by Nanako Nakajima (Dance Researcher and Dramaturge)
Co-presented by Kyoto Experiment and Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels